Big Girls Do Cry

**warning - small spoiler alert for Ramona and Beezus**

Tears streamed down my cheeks. I glanced over at The May Queen, and she quickly looked away from me. Bagged crying again, I thought. But then I heard her sniff. She was crying, too. Her knees were pulled in to her chest. I lifted the arm separating our cinema seats, and rested my hand gently on her shoe. I thought she might cuddle into me, but she didn't.

For the rest of the movie she laughed, a little, but not nearly as full heartedly as she had before.

When the movie ended, we walked out, hand in hand.

What made you sad? I asked. I thought I knew, but I wanted to make sure I didn't go delving into stuff that hadn't bothered her.

When the cat died, she sniffed, and began crying again. I picked her up and held her while she wept. Wept. People walked by us, looking both sympathetic and curious.

I'm not sure if it was only the cat dying, and her thinking about OUR cats dying, as she said. Maybe it was that Ramona was probably going to have to move, and we have just moved away from her friends and her house and her school and the only life she's known. Maybe it was the fighting parents. I suspect that, like me, a sad point in a movie gave her a chance to cry and release all sorts of emotions we've been struggling with for weeks. These past few have not been easy. So yes, it's the cat, but it's so much more...intangible things that had everything and nothing to do with the movie.

Regardless, my child has cried over her first movie.

And I forgot to pack the tissues.

When it rains... it floods

So we have this house that we're staying in, for free, until we're able to buy a house here. It's smaller than our old house, so we planned to leave approximately 1/2 of our belongings in boxes, which we unloaded directly into the basement.

When the movers left at about 6:30 Friday night we were whipped, and went out to eat. When we returned home my husband went down to the basement to discover water. Everywhere. Several inches deep in some places. You know, those places where our boxes were.

We've been on damage control for the last 24 hours. Every box has been examined, and any box that was wet has been unpacked, with the contents spread out to dry. Miraculously enough, we managed to save just about everything, except a few magazines (which, truth be told, we didn't try to save). The sump pump has been replaced, the basement floor mopped and bleached, and all of our belongings now sit on pallets, raising them several inches off of the floor, in case that new pump doesn't do the trick.

I still have no idea where my pots and pans are. It took me until about an hour ago to get the smoke detectors to stop beeping (the batteries were dying, and then the replacement batteries were apparently also too weak).

And as if all of this weren't enough... while we were out to eat on Friday that storm that soaked our basement knocked out the power in the restaurant where we were eating, and at my in-laws. They aren't due to have power again until late Sunday night. So my MIL, FIL, and SIL (plus her two dogs) are also staying here, because my FIL can't sleep without his breathing machine.

I'm trying to keep positive, but I have to admit, this song keeps coming to mind:

Moving

I stood in the kitchen, staring at the cabinets. I thought If I just look at the cabinets and the counter, everything seems normal. I let my mind swim blankly for a moment, took a deep breath, and looked up. Past the kitchen counter was the living room, which was decidedly NOT normal. The couches and chair were gone, blue padding crisscrossed the hardwood floors, and assorted boxes and other furniture awaited loading onto the truck rumbling away in front of my house.

That was two days ago. Now everything I own is currently inside of a semi, which is somewhere between here and there. I'm in a hotel room outside of Nashville with The May Queen and two fairly pissed off cats.

And I'm exhausted.

We have not sold the house, but someone at our new church in Michigan has a house that THEY haven't sold, and are allowing us to live there until we can buy. It all came about very quickly, and I'm still spinning from the flurry of activity that led up to where I am now.

I did get in one fabulous trip into the city with friend, a trip that include dinner uptown, music on Frenchmen Street, a trip to some bars in the quarter I had never been to, and one I had, watching the tourists make idiots of themselves on Bourbon Street, an early morning snack, and a return home at 4:30am. Now THAT'S a proper good-bye to NOLA.

I got in some good farewells with some friends, and just didn't have time to even check in with others, and feel a bit like I skipped town.

I'm excited and sad and basically just emotionally whiplashed, but haven't had much time to actually FEEL anything amid the long list of things to get done.

And now... it's time to sleep.

Mix Tape

I made and received a lot of mix tapes in high school, and even college. Because of this, I will often hear a song and feel like it should be immediately followed by a particular song.

When Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar On Me ends, I expect to hear the opening chords of AC/DCs You Shook Me All Night Long.

Dusty Springfield's Son of a Preacher Man should come right on the heels of Aretha Franklin's Think.

Jungle Boogie should lead into One Way or Another.

The Muppets' singing Coconut should always be followed by Jethro Tull's Songs From the Wood, of course.

What songs do you have permanently glued together in your brain?



Mix Tape, from Avenue Q

(five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes) x 14

5 homes
7 cats
1 child
1 love

14 years, measured in love

(and currently 1040 miles between us)

Biting my virtual tongue

Some Facebook statuses I'll never actually post:

Painted Maypole doesn't care what you had for lunch. Unless it was monkey brains.

Painted Maypole can't help but think, every time you post that you need more ammunition or seeds or food for your pink llama, that what you really need is a life.

Painted Maypole finds it really creepy when married couples communicate everyday information to each other via FB wall posts.

Painted Maypole wishes that you were in the 98% of people who don't copy and paste.

Painted Maypole understands that typos happen, but thinks that if you're starting a page for FB you really ought to spell everything correctly.

Painted Maypole can't understand why you post dire warnings about FB invading our privacy, but then constantly run applications that warn you they are going to access all your information.

Painted Maypole will usually deny the use of such applications, no matter how curious she is about the question you answered about her.

Painted Maypole sometimes leaves the FB page open on her computer and walks away for hours, therefore missing your chat. Sometimes she just pretends that she has. You'll never know which it really is.

What are some FB statuses you'll never post?